


The Rage of the Obscurist

by RosalindInPants



Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Gen, Post-Rome, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Serious Injuries, Whump, pre-Ink and Bone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24131137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosalindInPants/pseuds/RosalindInPants
Summary: We know Qualls released Wolfe. We know Keria was there to bring him home. This is that story.
Relationships: Christopher Wolfe & Keria Morning, background Keria/Eskander, background Wolfe/Santi
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	The Rage of the Obscurist

**Author's Note:**

> From the Qualls letter in Smoke and Iron:  
> “There are limits, and he has reached them. So have I, surprisingly.  
> Therefore, I have personally released Scholar Wolfe, and I have seen the Archivist in person and explained my decisions. The Obscurist Magnus has also been told. The Archivist was not happy with this, but he agreed - based upon my extensive knowledge of other prisoners kept in our Roman cells - to allow me to exercise this one, small, almost meaningless act of mercy. Or, at least, he didn’t dare stop me, given the rage of his Obscurist.”

Keria Morning hated her office in the Serapeum. Located on the same floor as the other Curia offices and decorated with murals and hieroglyphs that told the stories of sorcerers and priests - Obscurists, of course - who served ancient pharaohs, it spoke of a lost time when the Obscurist Magnus was a leader among Scholars, not a prisoner deputized as warden. No real work was done here; it existed as a formality and a place for meetings outside the Iron Tower.

Just as well that this late-night meeting would happen here. Keria would rather not picture this horrible man with his empty eyes and his bland gray robes while she went about her work. Her office in the Iron Tower was the place of enough terrible dealings without adding this.

“What do you want, Master Qualls?” she asked with the cold tone that she had honed on such vile underlings as Gregory. She offered no pleasantries, no hospitality. This man did not deserve such things. She knew what he did.

He looked right at her. Unnerving. There was something wrong in the way he looked at her, something she couldn’t put her finger on. “You have read the reports on Scholar Wolfe?”

 _Scholar Wolfe._ It always sounded so distant to her, that name. It wasn’t the name of her son, her lost Christopher, but another man, one who had run as far and as fast as he could from the Iron Tower. As well he should have.

“Yes.” She’d frozen her own heart to ice to meet the demands of her position, and still she could not fathom how to be so unfeeling as to look a mother in the eye and ask to know if she’d read reports of her son’s torture. “If you have another, you could have sent it to my Codex.”

“No. I will not waste your time with that. I have come to inform you that I am releasing Scholar Wolfe. This has gone on long enough.”

Was that a note of fear in the man’s voice? Just as well. He _should_ fear her, after the things he’d done. But no, he wouldn’t be seated in her office if she was the one he feared. She had no authority in this matter. If she had, she wouldn’t have been forced to beg for her son’s pain in trade for his life. There was only one reason this Qualls would have asked to meet with her.

“The Archivist hasn’t authorized this.”

Qualls nodded, a fractional inclination of his head. His lips curved into a thin smile that Keria wanted to slap from his face. “Correct. Nor do I intend to request his authorization. In this case, I think, it will be better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”

That meant the man didn’t expect the Archivist to agree. “Why are you doing this?” Keria asked. She’d learned not to expect favors for nothing, and there was no denying that her son’s release would be a significant favor.

The torturer’s eyes bored into her. “The reports that you have been given omitted certain details.”

White-hot rage flared along Keria’s every nerve, and it was only the force of years of practice at maintaining a calm facade that kept her from reaching across the table and strangling the man. _Omitted certain details_. Those reports detailed every abuse inflicted on her son. Every degradation. Every scream. Every desperate plea. Every truth and every lie that they forced from him. Every proud silence.

There had been more and more of those, lately. Her son was strong. He was learning to fight even this.

Unaware of Keria’s silent simmering, Qualls went on. “The state of Scholar Wolfe’s health, for instance. He is growing weaker. Without a Medica examination, I cannot be certain, but I do not know that he would survive another round of interrogation, as the Artifex Magnus has ordered.”

No surprise that the Artifex intended for Christopher to die in his prison. Keria had known that would be his aim from the beginning, but she’d counted on her own influence with the Curia to stay her old enemy’s hand. If he thought that he could get away with murdering Christopher now, that meant something had changed that Keria was not yet aware of. 

Something she would have to worry about another time, because Qualls was still talking in that flat, inflectionless voice, as empty as his eyes. “The state of Scholar Wolfe’s mind, as well. You have seen his silences on the reports. Those are not acts of defiance. He has all but lost the ability to speak. Much of the time, I suspect that he does not know where he is or understand what is happening to him. He is broken.”

Keria could see the man’s heart, red with blood and quintessence. She could see his lungs, the flow of his breath. She could see the strings of power that she could cut and choke off his life. She could kill him on a whim, and that meant that she could bide her time. He remained useful to her until Christopher was free.

“That is the goal of your endeavor, is it not?” she asked with feigned indifference. Like everything else, this was a negotiation, and she would improve her own position if she didn’t let on how much she cared. “Why release him now?”

Qualls shook his head, his brows drawing together. “I do what I do for the protection of the Great Library. You and I both know that terrible things are necessary in pursuit of that end. But there are limits. There is no purpose in inflicting more pain on Scholar Wolfe now. Interrogating him is like torturing a child or a dog, and I find that I have no stomach for it.”

 _Like torturing a child_ . Unintentionally, Qualls had described the images that filled Keria’s nightmares. It wasn’t the grown man that she saw in her dreams, but the helpless infant she’d cradled in her arms, the sad-eyed boy she’d clung to for as long as she could, the dejected child she’d watched walking with slumped shoulders away from the Iron Tower. _You always were torturing a child_ , she wanted to scream. _My child. And you dare compare him to a dog. Wolfe. You dare..._

She could see the torturer’s life, bright and oh, so fragile. She could feel her own power reaching out. The man’s pulse raced, as if somehow he knew the danger he was in.

With her nails digging into her palms beneath the desk, Keria locked away the screaming anguish in the icy vault of her heart and reined in her power. It wouldn’t do her any good now. There would be a reckoning. There would have to be a reckoning. But not now.

“Get to to the point,” she said with frosty calm. “I have no interest in your justifications. You’ve come to me with this. Why?”

Qualls met her eyes again, and she barely suppressed a shiver. She’d thought she’d killed her own humanity with the things she’d seen and done, but that was nothing compared to the void she saw in Qualls. Like looking into the abyss and seeing it look back. “As I said, I intend to release Scholar Wolfe. I suspect that he is more likely to remain that way if I release him into your custody.”

Keria regarded him. Gazed back into the abyss of him. “That seems a reasonable supposition. What will you do after he is released?”

“I’ve had my safe retirement planned for a very long time, Obscurist,” Qualls said. “It is a natural hazard of my position that people will want me dead. My main concern is with my exit from Alexandria. It would be… preferable if the Archivist’s attention were elsewhere for a time.”

“And that is where I come in,” Keria said, leaning forward and resting her hands on the desk.

* * *

In the Serapeum’s Translation Chamber, Keria dismissed the Obscurist on duty, allowing him the rare privilege of venturing to the reading rooms there. With as much leverage as she held over him thanks to his propensity for errors, she doubted he would pose a problem, but something in her recoiled at the thought of the bumbling old fool being there when Christopher came through. She was tempted to dismiss her guards, too, but she resisted that impulse. She couldn’t rule out the possibility that this was a trap. Qualls was, after all, the Artifex’s lackey.

To ease the strain of waiting, she examined the room’s equipment. Showing its age, all of it. Exposed tubes and wires, outdated designs, weakening scripts. Due for replacement. Snapping her Codex open, she made a note to move this Translation Chamber up on the list for renovations, well aware that the decision was motivated as much by emotion as reason. She counted the occasional opportunity for pettiness among the few perks of her position.

Flipping through pages without seeing a word, she mentally reviewed what was to be done. The plan Qualls had laid out in her office was simple enough, or at least her role in it would be. More steps than were strictly necessary, but she felt no need to dissuade the torturer from giving his resignation to the Archivist in person. If the bastard got himself impaled by an automaton for his trouble, she would count that as a bonus. Christopher would already be safe by then.

Keria felt her son’s arrival even before his body formed in the chair. No matter how far apart their lives had torn them, she would always know his quintessence. The bonds of family were not so easily severed.

Oh, but it was so weak, that energy. She’d have thought something went wrong with the Translation if not for the solidity of the body that slumped in the rickety chair. 

So still.

So thin.

A hood over his head.

She’d never been the sort of mother to rush to her child to fuss over scraped knees and bumped toes, but she was at his side now, before her mind even registered her feet making the decision to move. Her vision shifted, looking through his physical form to the underlying quintessence while she pulled at the hood with shaking hands.

Blood and breath flowed in him still, faint lines of red and blue within his body. Relief coursed through her at the sight, mingling with horror as she registered the pain. She’d known there would be pain. She’d condoned it, after all, in exchange for the life that pulsed through him. She hadn’t been prepared for its magnitude. She doubted her nightmares would ever let her forget it.

The hood came off, setting loose a tumble of long, tangled black hair. Christopher cringed from the light, moaning. A low, animal sound.

 _Like torturing a dog_ , Qualls had said.

The glows dimmed at her will. A waste of power, expended without conscious thought. She could have ordered her guards to do it.

Christopher didn’t move. He huddled against the side of the chair, shaking and barely balanced, his head turned away and the pain rolling off him like waves. Not only pain, but fear. He reeked of it, sour sweat and blood and gods only knew what other filth.

When she moved around to crouch beside him, his eyes were open, but that was no comfort. They stared at her, hollow and lightless in his gaunt face. As if he didn’t know her. As if he didn’t care. She put her hand on his shoulder, lightly, gently, avoiding the places that pulsed with pain, and he turned his face away. Whimpered.

The sound was alien to her. Her Christopher had never been one to cry over small hurts as other children did. He’d always been brave, even as a tiny child. He’d built his career on work in war zones, as a man. Qualls had robbed him of his courage.

Qualls. Qualls would be coming through. She had to move Christopher. Steeling herself, Keria wrapped her arms around her son as she had when he was a child to help him up. He couldn’t have weighed much more now than when he left the Iron Tower at ten years old.

To her surprise, Christopher got his feet under him to stand, though the cry that came from him seemed to pierce to Keria’s very soul. He swayed, more than half his scant weight supported by Keria’s embrace, but he stood.

So strong, her son was. So strong, even now.

But so fragile. As her guards stepped in to take Christopher’s weight from her, Keria could see the damage her son’s body had sustained. The wounds on the outside were bad enough, all painful and vulnerable to infection, but the more insidious threat lay within. 

Christopher was dying. Not quickly. Slowly and horribly, his organs faltering under the strain of the abuse he’d endured. It wasn’t inevitable. Not yet. With rest and care, his body could still restore itself. But if they’d tortured him again…

Her power was already in motion by the time Keria shook off that awful line of thought. She’d laid her hand on his chest almost by instinct and drawn on her own quintessence. No scripts, just raw energy, flowing from her body to his, pouring into struggling kidneys to infuse them with life. Dangerous. So very dangerous, to use her talent this way. If she pushed herself too far, she knew what would happen.

She’d seen how Eskander had been, all those years ago. So hungry. So cold.

She wouldn’t let it come to that. She took her power more firmly in hand, channeling it with all the control she’d mastered over years of practice and directing it with precision to the worst of the internal damage. That was all she allowed herself to do. She closed her heart to the bruises, the cuts, the burns, all screaming for relief she couldn’t give.

Faintly, she was aware of Qualls materializing as she finished the healing. Just as well that her concentration was otherwise occupied. She might not otherwise have resisted the temptation to lash out. By the time she looked over her son’s shoulder at his torturer, she had herself under iron-firm control. Like an automaton in the body of a woman, running only the program it had been given.

(If only. If only she could be an automaton, and not have to feel or know or really see.)

Qualls looked at her, at Christopher, as if assessing them both. As if he knew anything about either of them. As if he had any right. As if he had any right to even breathe, after what he’d done.

(After what _she’d_ done, her conscience whispered, very quietly, in the back of her mind.)

She glared back at him. “Go.” She all but spat the word.

With a nod, Qualls turned and walked away, perfectly calm. Not even a hint of fear or guilt to soothe her roiling mass of anguish.

Keria made herself turn away from her son, thin and bloody and filthy and broken. She took out her Codex, scrawled out a message in the worst handwriting she’d ever put to the page, and said to the guards, “Come. Help him. The carriage will be waiting.”

* * *

A Medica carriage, with room for a stretcher in the back, would be better suited to this task than Keria’s personal carriage. As well as the velvet seats were padded, they were cruelly inadequate for a man in Christopher’s condition. Keria ended up sitting wedged into the corner with Christopher stretched out on the seat, collapsed against her with his head resting on her chest for the first time since he’d been a small boy. He'd come easily enough, allowing himself to be directed and positioned as Keria asked. He wasn't fighting, wasn't struggling. Maybe that should have been a relief, but it chilled her to the bone.

She didn’t allow her guards into the passenger compartment. Bad enough that they’d held Christopher while he stumbled and moaned his way to the carriage. She couldn’t bear the thought of them hearing his whimpers at the bumps in the road and seeing him flinch at every sound.

Nor would it do for them to hear her humming, an old song she’d sung Christopher to sleep with when he was young, so long ago now. She’d had such hopes for him then, in those early years before she learned she would lose him. Back when she and Eskander still argued through his door about whose name their son would take. 

It should have been hers, of course. She was the more powerful, if only by a hair, and besides, she’d let Eskander choose their son’s given name. He’d been the one to choose Christopher, after a beloved grandfather Keria had neither met nor heard him speak of. A Christian, presumably, or named by one at least. She’d found it amusing then, pagan as she and Eskander both were. Amusing later, too, when Christopher went and fell in love with a Catholic. It would have been funnier still if they’d married, if Christopher had taken his partner’s name. Christopher Santi. Steadfastly pagan. The one thing he’d kept from his parents.

Such thoughts she occupied herself with, to keep from thinking of the way his ragged clothes hung loose on bony limbs. Gently, she stroked his cheek, the patchy fur of his beard strange beneath her fingers. So much like his father’s. Some part of her mind protested that his cheek should still be smooth as she remembered it. A boy’s soft face that had not yet known hardship, let alone horror.

She would have kept him, if she could. Then and now. That was what she’d let Qualls think she was going to do. Take Christopher back with her to the Iron Tower to recover. If things went badly with the Archivist, it would be best if the Curia thought Christopher was in the Iron Tower.

The direction they’d taken could have brought them to the Iron Tower. It wasn’t the most direct route, but it was possible. These roads weren’t so well maintained as the direct route. At a sharp bump, she nearly lost hold of Christopher, and his agonized scream echoed in the enclosed space.

Rapping on the partition that separated them from the driver’s seat, Keria shouted, even louder, “Slow down and watch the bumps, fool! Do that again and I’ll have you discharged from the Garda!” It wasn’t an idle threat. She was on good enough terms with the captain stationed in the Iron Tower, and the Lord Commander was the closest thing she had to an ally within the Curia. 

The carriage slowed somewhat, for all the good it did. Cradled in her arms, Christopher let out a pained whine. She was hurting him. There was no way to avoid hurting him. All she could do was stroke his face and offer what few assurances she could give.

"Shh, Christopher, it will be over soon. You'll be home soon," she said, reaching for the soothing voice she hadn’t let herself use since he was small.

There was a twisted part of her mind that reveled in this, spinning fantasies that in this state, Christopher might be her child again. This might be like a rebirth, it whispered. With the man she’d never had the chance to know wiped away by pain and his wounded body helpless as an infant’s, Christopher could be her child again. In the beginning, at least, he would need to be bathed, dressed, fed with a spoon. She could nurse him back to health. Be his mother again.

But that was folly, just a longing she’d stomped down decades ago rearing its head once more. One look at his face was enough to dispel it. The eyes that looked up at her were not the adoring brown eyes of her infant son, gazing at her with fascination and trust. These eyes were still that same brown, the same as his father’s, but they were glassy and dazed, confused and frightened. 

Broken. Just as Qualls had said. This wasn’t her lost child, but a deeply wounded man, and whatever remained of him in this shivering shell, she wouldn’t be the one to heal him. She could only make things worse if she tried.

No, she thought, smoothing his beard as she looked away from his haunted face, she wasn’t the one he needed. She wasn’t the one he’d cried for in the dark for the past year. Gods, how she hated Qualls for telling her that.

_“He is still capable of speech,” Qualls had said when she’d asked. “He cries out in his sleep for his lover, much the same as he did when he arrived in the prison. With the right prompting, he will say a few words during questioning.”_

_“The right prompting?”_

_“Threats to Niccolo Santi, of course. His devotion to the man is impressively consistent.”_

If she hadn’t already made up her mind to bring Christopher home to Santi, that alone might have convinced her. There were logical reasons too, of course, foremost among them the fact that by involving Santi, she gave the High Garda Commander a greater stake in all this. Mostly, though, it was the knowledge that Niccolo Santi was the only one who might stand any chance at all of healing Christopher’s broken mind, or even giving him any real comfort. Gods knew her own efforts were useless enough.

After what seemed like miles of little bumps, little flinches and little cries, the carriage came to a stop. Keria had never been on this street before. She’d never had the chance to see the place her son had chosen as his home, not far from her own home, but an uncrossable distance all the same. It was a small house, humble but well-maintained. No light from within, but she’d already taken advantage of her access to the Codex system and checked the High Garda duty rosters. Captain Niccolo Santi would be home. Most likely asleep at this hour.

For this, he would wake up. Keria had confidence in that. Failing that, she had a Codex and scripts to send a secure message informing him of what waited at his door.

Her guards had jumped down from the driver’s box and opened her door to help Christopher out. On a desperate whim, she almost got out with him, but good sense won out, and she let the guards take him from her arms. She couldn't be seen here.

"Go on, Christopher,” she said, warm and encouraging as she could make herself be. “You're home. Nic will take care of you."

She shouldn’t call Captain Santi that. She didn’t know him, except from those passages of Christopher’s journals she’d read, curled up against the shelves in the Black Archives with her eyes long since run dry of tears. From those, she knew enough. Christopher would be cared for. Christopher would be safe. Christopher would be loved better than she'd ever been able to love him.

Christopher stood there in the street, unsteady but upright as the guards retreated to the carriage. There was a determination in the set of his shoulders that she hadn’t seen before. Slowly, he lifted his foot, dragged it forward over the cobblestones. One step, then another. Walking to the door.

Keria had a sudden vision of his small back, growing smaller as he followed his High Garda escort away from the Iron Tower. Ten years old, and she’d watched him go without saying goodbye. This was her chance to do better, but the words came out in a choked whisper, drowned out by the hiss of the carriage.

The carriage pulled away, and Keria could not stop it. Not if she wanted to make it to the Iron Tower and be seen entering the gates within the necessary timeframe. There was a plan in motion, and she had a role to play yet. One that she looked forward to, even. Later, maybe, she would regret this bit of misdirection as unnecessary paranoia, but for now, anything else seemed a reckless gamble, and Keria had never cared to throw the dice. 

She watched Christopher for as long as she could through the back window. She saw him stumble, and then the carriage turned a corner and she saw no more. Sitting back in her seat, on bloodstained velvet that would need to be torn out and replaced, she opened her Codex and called up a map. On the page, she watched the tiny dot that represented her son cross the line into the little rectangle that represented his house.

Nic had him. He would be all right. If she believed anything else, she would shatter.

* * *

A brief return to the Iron Tower. Just long enough to change into her formal robes. Just long enough to read the letter from Eskander, delivered through the usual secure method.

One more Translation into the Serapeum, and Keria stalked down the hall to the Archivist’s office, loosening the reins of her rage as she drew near. But only a little. Only enough to let the old bastard see the fury and power that twined within her like a pair of serpents. She would heed Eskander’s council, as he had heeded hers so many years ago.

She would ensure Christopher’s safety, and the safety of the Obscurists under her protection.

But once that was done, she would turn to thoughts of revenge. Too long, she had accepted the Library’s corruption as inevitable. No longer. She would see the Archivist fall, and the Curia with him. If that included herself, so be it.


End file.
